Printer In Petticoats. Lynna Banning

      “Passing through?”

      “Nope. Staying.”

      “Don’t talk much, do you?”

      “Nope.”

      “More coffee?”

      He nodded and left her a good-sized tip.

      He spent the morning setting up the press, then asked around town for a typesetter. Nada. By suppertime he’d given up, stopped by the barbershop for a shave and a haircut and a bath, then returned to the restaurant for dinner.

      “Know anyone who can set type?” he asked the attentive waitress.

      “No, but I do know someone who’d like to learn,” she said. She leaned toward him confidentially. “Young Noralee Ness. You’ll find her at the mercantile. Her father’s the owner.”

      “Her?”

      “Sure, why not? You got something against females?”

      “Not if they can set type, I don’t. How come she’s not working for the Sentinel?”

      “Oh, Miss Jessamine sets her own type. Always has, even before her brother died.”

      Cole lowered his coffee cup. “Died?”

      “That’s what I said. Irate subscriber shot him.”

      Hell... This was no better than Kansas City. He’d narrowly escaped the same fate as a result of an editorial he’d written on abolition. Actually sometimes he wished he had been shot; might have been easier than what he’d gone through later.

      “What was the issue?” he asked cautiously. “Not slavery, was it?”

      “Nah. Election coming up. People out here get pretty riled up.”

      It was full dark by the time he tramped up the stairs to his quarters, and he was dead tired. But not too tired. Quickly he washed and then doused the lamp and waited.

      Sure enough, about nine o’clock the blinds across the way snapped down and the light went on behind them. Cole watched until he couldn’t stand it any longer, then spent the next three hours trying to get to sleep. The next morning he could hardly drag himself off his cot.

      Noralee Ness turned up promptly at ten o’clock. Hell, she was only eleven or twelve years old, but her brown eyes snapped with intelligence, and she brought apples and cheese and a slab of chocolate cake for her lunch and shared it with him while he showed her how to arrange the pieces of lead type in her type stick.

      She was quick to learn and even quicker with her hands. By noon he had finished the last page of the story he’d been writing, and before three in the afternoon Noralee had typeset it right down to the last comma.

      Two Newspapers? Why Not?

      Why shouldn’t the Smoke River Sentinel have some competition? It’s a free country. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. Besides, the little popgun press in this town shouldn’t fear a bit of healthy competition.

      Or should it? Is it possible the Smoke River Sentinel has grown complacent because it’s the one and only newspaper in this fair community?

      I ask you—with an election coming up, isn’t it reasonable to present two sides to every question?

      Cole Sanders

      Editor, Lake County Lark

      That night before he crawled onto his cot he slipped a copy of his first edition under the door of the Sentinel office across the street.

       Chapter Two

      “Popgun press!” Jessamine screeched. “Popgun? Just who does this Cole Sanders think he is?”

      Elijah Holst, her printer’s devil, pushed his scruffy cap off his forehead with fingers stained black with ink and aimed a squirt of tobacco juice into the spittoon beside his stool.

      “Fer as I kin tell, Miss Jessamine, he’s the gent across the street with the fancy Ramage press.”

      “Gent! He’s no ‘gent,’ Eli. He’s an interloper. An opportunist. A muckraker.”

      “No, he ain’t. He’s jest another newspaper editor, same as you.”

      “He is not the same as me, not by a long shot. He’s rude and uncouth and—”

      “I hear tell he’s hired the Ness girl to set type fer him.”

      “What? Noralee? How could she?”

      “Beggin’ yer pardon, Jess, but you cain’t blame the girl. When she wanted to come work for the Sentinel, you wouldn’t hire her.”

      * * *

      Cole lowered his paintbrush, climbed down from the ladder and stepped backward across the street to admire his handiwork.

      Crisp black lettering marched across the doorway of the bank building he’d rented, and the name he’d carefully stenciled sent a surge of satisfaction from his brain all the way into his belly. By golly, this was better than a perfectly grilled rare steak. Better than the sight of the snow-covered Rocky Mountains. Better even than sex.

      Well, maybe not better than sex. Nothing was better than holding a woman in his arms, or undressing her slowly and...

      Hell and damn. He could hardly stand remembering how it had been. He’d spent long, heated nights in Maryann’s arms, stroking her body and thinking he was the luckiest son of a gun on the planet.

      Oh, God, remembering it felt as if something were slicing into his gut. Never again, he swore. Never, never, never again.

      He refocused on the name he’d chosen for his newspaper, the Lake County Lark. Then he climbed back up on the ladder and added his own name in smaller printing below, followed by the word Editor.

      This called for a shot of something to celebrate. He plopped his brush in a half bucket of turpentine and strode down the boardwalk to the Golden Partridge.

      The portly redheaded bartender gave him the once-over. “New in town, huh?”

      “Yeah, you might say that.” He reached over the polished expanse of mahogany to offer his hand. “Cole Sanders. Just came in yesterday with my printing press and a couple bales of newsprint.”

      The man’s rust-colored eyebrows rose. “Already got a newspaper in Smoke River, Mr. Sanders. Guess nobody told you, huh?”

      “Yeah, they told me. Decided to come anyway.”

      “Care for a farewell drink?”

      Cole laughed. “Sure. But make it a welcome-to-town shot of whiskey. I’m staying.”

      “It’s your funeral, mister. You met Jessamine Lassiter?”

      “Jessamine, huh? Works at the Sentinel office?”

      “Owns the Sentinel.” The barkeep moved away, sloshed liquor into a shot glass and slid it down to Cole. “Name’s Tom O’Reilly, Mr. Sanders. I’d welcome you to town, but I figure you ain’t gonna be here long.”

      “Care to bet on that? I just finished painting the name on my newspaper office. Paint isn’t even dry yet.”

      Tom moved out from behind the bar, tramped over to the batwing doors and peered out. “Lake County Lark, is it? Kinda fancy for a small town like this.”

      “Maybe.” Cole sipped his whiskey.

      “Gotta hand it to you, Mr. Sanders. Takes nerve to run a newspaper out West.”

      “Not as much nerve as running a newspaper in Kansas. An abolitionist newspaper.” He downed the rest of his drink in one gulp.

      A tall gent, nattily dressed in a gray pin-striped